Orphaned elephant returns to sanctuary to show off first calf Kenya
An elephant that had been reintroduced to the wild after being raised in an orphanage has returned to show her first calf to the keeper who fed her bottled milk by hand.
Loijuk, now 13, brought newborn Lili to see Benjamin Kyalo at the Ithumba Reintegration Centre in Kenya, where the elephant had spent years preparing to live independently.
Kyalo has worked for about 15 years at the centre in Tsavo East national park in southwest Kenya, raising scores of elephants orphaned mostly as a result of poaching.
Loijuk was rescued from a dried-out swamp in Samburu, northern Kenya, in 2006 when she was five months old. She spent about a year at an elephant orphanage on the edge of Nairobi national park run by the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust before being transferred to the charity’s rehabilitation centre at Tsavo East national park. Elephants are cared for there for several years until they are confident enough to head off into the reserve, Kenya’s largest, to live as part of a herd. As Loijuk walked into Ithumba this week with the new calf, just a day or two old, she was greeted by trumpets of welcome by other elephants, staff at the centre said.
‘‘The grown elephants go on to new lives in the Tsavo conservation area, but the bond with those who brought them up is not lost,’’ Angela Sheldrick, from the trust, said. ‘‘They never forget the kindness and sometimes they do want to return. Watching Loijuk heal, flourish and transition to a wild independent life and now to see her transform into a mother is the ultimate affirmation of a job well done.’’
The orphanage was set up in Nairobi in 1977 by the Kenyan conservationist Daphne Sheldrick. It was the first organisation in the world successfully to raise milk-dependent orphaned elephants by hand and reintegrate them back into the wild. Her work grew from her care of the orphaned elephants found by her British husband, David Sheldrick, who was chief warden at the Tsavo national park in Kenya in the Sixties. The charity has so far successfully raised 244 elephants.